A small plane car­ry­ing three peo­ple crashed Fri­day morn­ing in South Flori­da near a ma­jor in­ter­state high­way and pushed a car on­to rail­road tracks, of­fi­cials said.

Bo­ca Ra­ton po­lice said sev­er­al roads near the Bo­ca Ra­ton Air­port were closed near In­ter­state 95 af­ter the plane went down short­ly af­ter 10 a.m. Lo­cal me­dia re­port­ed the plane was on fire and fire­fight­ers were re­spond­ing.

The Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion iden­ti­fied the plane as a Cess­na 310 with three peo­ple on board, though it wasn’t im­me­di­ate­ly known if any­one had died. It went down about 10:20 a.m. af­ter de­part­ing from Bo­ca Ra­ton Air­port bound for Tal­la­has­see, the FAA said in an email.

Fire of­fi­cials told the South Flori­da Sun Sen­tinel that the air­craft ap­peared to have pushed a car on­to the rail­road tracks, lead­ing to their clo­sure. The fate of the car’s oc­cu­pants al­so was un­known.

Josh Orsi­no, 31, said he was stopped at a red light at a near­by over­pass when he heard a loud ex­plo­sion and saw a huge fire­ball come to­ward him.

“We’re just sit­ting there, and I see the palm trees start catch­ing on fire,” Orsi­no said. “I thought it was an oil rig or a car crash type thing.”

Orsi­no said every­one was honk­ing and try­ing to get off the over­pass, not sure if it was go­ing to col­lapse.

“So I didn’t know if the fire was go­ing to come to­wards the ve­hi­cles, I mean, my first in­stinct was like, I got to get off this bridge. I’m get­ting out of here,” Orsi­no said.

Miguel Co­ka, 51, who works near the Bo­ca Ra­ton air­port, said he is used to see­ing planes fly­ing low as they pre­pare to land. But this time, he and his col­leagues no­ticed some­thing was off.

“There was a rum­ble and every­one in the build­ing felt it,” he said when the plane crashed. “We are all shocked.”

He cap­tured the smoke and flames from the crash from his of­fice bal­cony on video.

Bo­ca Ra­ton May­or Scott Singer said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was just be­gin­ning.

“We are deeply sad­dened to con­firm that a plane crash oc­curred ear­li­er to­day with­in our com­mu­ni­ty. At this time, de­tails are still emerg­ing, and we are work­ing close­ly with emer­gency re­spon­ders and au­thor­i­ties,” Singer said in a state­ment. “Our thoughts are with all those af­fect­ed by this trag­ic event. We ask for pa­tience and re­spect for the fam­i­lies in­volved as in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue.”

The FAA and the Na­tion­al Trans­porta­tion Safe­ty Board are in­ves­ti­gat­ing, with the NTSB lead­ing the probe.

The small plane crash in South Flori­da comes a day af­ter a New York City sight­see­ing he­li­copter broke apart in midair and crashed up­side-down in­to the Hud­son Riv­er, killing the pi­lot and a fam­i­ly of five Span­ish tourists.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press pro­duc­er Beat­rice Dupuy con­tributed to this re­port from New York.

By STEPHANY MATAT and CURT AN­DER­SON

BO­CA RA­TON, Fla. (AP)